>Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 05:58:48 -0800
>"Michael Robison" <
zspider@gte.net> writes:
>Subject: RARA-AVIS: something about a
soldier
>
>
>just finished willeford's _something about a
soldier_. a tour de force of
>commercial sex in pre-WWII phillipines. some
interesting stories but i
>can't really recommend it. the book ends very early
in his life... i'd say
>he's not even 20 yet, so there's no discussion of his
literary career.
That's a strange leap of logic for not recommending a book.
Of course there is no discussion of his literary career:
this, and "Street" are the
_basis_ for his later career, and much more apropos, in some
ways, than the recent Dennis McMillan collection of
Willeford's non-fiction.
Then again, both Something About A Soldier _and_ Crumley's
One to Count Cadence have a special resonance for me; by the
time I did my sabbatical at Clark AB, RPI (May 67 - Sept 68)
things were a bit more "civilized" (the only day we were
"locked down" to base, that of Marcos' second
"re-election", everyone in the Filipino press was very
Thrilled there had only been something like 47
election-related deaths) -- but when, decades later I first
read the Willeford and the Crumley (along with Joe Haldeman's
pre-Forever War Year), the sense of flashback was
tangible.
The fact that all three books are a *lot* less _fiction_, or
hyperbole, than you'd guess, makes them h-b, if not
necessarily noir.
--- Bill Bowers | <BBowers@One.net> | mailto:BBowers@One.net
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